


Have You Seen Enough?

by TheSigyn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:10:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone reacts differently to the Untempered Schism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have You Seen Enough?

**Author's Note:**

> Some of this story has already been told in my story In Recess. But I realized this concept actually could stand alone.

  
  
  
Everyone reacted differently to the sight of the Untempered Schism. It was a rite of passage. A coming of age. The leaving behind of the simple title “Gallifreyan” and becoming a “Time Lord.” It was a test of character. Who you were before the Untempered Schism was never the same as who you were after.   
  
Mostly, the children were inspired. The were stronger, braver, more clever, more dedicated. It was usually a joyful time for all.   
  
But there were exceptions....   
  
  
***  
  
  
Lord Borusa. A tiny, impossibly unhealthy child, had clenched his fists, inspired to power. When he’d seen enough, he turned his back and went back to the academy with his head held high. He studied hard, ingratiated himself to his teachers, did everything to make his name known, to make his presence indelible.   
  
To make himself immortal.   
  
When he graduated, he was already president of the student body.   
  
  
***  
  
  
The Rani. An easily distracted child, interested in everything, the Rani’s eyes had opened wide, and she stared and stared and stared, fascinated. Finally she had to be dragged away, protesting.   
  
When she returned to the academy she stopped trying to study everything at once, and pursued one subject until it was exhausted before she would let herself turn to another. To the exclusion of everything else.   
  
Including other people.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Romanadveratnalunda had been very shy before she was brought to the schism. Placed before the open pool of time, she raised her eyebrows and suddenly started to laugh. She left still chuckling. Often she would laugh to herself, sometimes at odd moments, and be unable to explain the joke.  
  
She graduated top of her class, and was scouted out for special missions by the Time Lord council. She became rather arrogant about it.   
  
It was all very amusing.   
  
  
***  
  
  
Drax was dull for a Gallifreyan, and he knew it. He was always a bit of a bumbler, and he knew the schism wouldn’t change that.   
  
It didn’t.  
  
But after he had seen it, he understood. Things made sense to him, and he could put them together in a way that made sense to the universe. He was still a bumbler, but a bumbler that bumbled through.   
  
  
  
***  
  
  
Koschi had once been a very kind, very generous, very obedient boy. The kind of friend a friend would want to have. Then he was brought before the schism.   
  
He started to scream.   
  
He too had to be dragged away. He didn’t have the strength to leave on his own.   
  
He was never the same after that. There was a darkness in his soul, as if he had swallowed a premonition of entropy. It etched into everything he did. Death was everywhere. In his writings. In his artwork. In the dreams he could tell no one about.   
  
Slowly, everything turned dark for him. He could not give without expecting something in return. He could not share his thoughts without holding something back. He was seductive and hypnotic and he drew people with charismatic charm. But by the time he had earned his Masters degree, everyone was afraid of him... and no one could really say why. They would find out.   
  
The Master would see to that.   
  
  
***  
  
  
Theta Sigma was an odd boy. Not popular. Not athletic. But he was studious, and obedient, and respectful. He did not draw attention to himself. Never one to stand out in a crowd. He was not afraid as they brought him before the schism.   
  
But at the first glimpse, he ran. They tried to catch him to bring him back, to make him look properly. But he had already seen enough.   
  
It took them two weeks to find him. He had run and run and continued to run, hiding, finally, on his friend Koschi’s ranch. It was there they found him and made him come back to the academy. There was some debate as to whether or not he should be allowed — he hadn’t had a proper look, after all. Finally the Time Lord council ruled that Theta was right — he had seen enough. Anyone who had that kind of reaction had to have seen enough of time to want to run from it.   
  
But he was teased, and ostracized, and his studies suffered. He fell to bottom of his class almost immediately. His name of “Theta” was sometimes changed to “Feet”, because of how he had run, and it was an epithet he was unable to run fast enough to escape from. It followed him all through school, until, at his second attempt, he scraped through at fifty-one percent and earned his doctorate.  
  
Why, everyone asked, did he even bother? He didn’t like school. The other students didn’t like him. He couldn’t explain it to anyone but his friend Koschi. Their friendship had grown stronger — both of them had reacted badly to the schism, and it made them closer. His explanation didn’t make sense to anyone else. “I just had to.”  
  
“I understand, Doctor,” Koschi had said. It was the first time anyone had called Theta that.  
  
“Doctor,” the Doctor said. He rather liked the sound of that.   
  
  
***  
  
  
The Doctor’s granddaughter, eventually called Susan, was a happy, delightful child. Then she was brought before the schism and made to peer into the whole of space and time. And Susan started to cry. And she cried and she cried, for days, refusing to eat, unable to sleep, alone in a pool of grief for everything. Her books went unread. Her friends were abandoned. The other children started calling her “Sobs.”   
  
It was happening all over again.   
  
Then, against all rules and all regulations, a TARDIS materialized in her academy dorm room. Students at the academy weren’t allowed visitors except on designated visiting days. But that didn’t matter to the Doctor. He scooped her up into his lap and rocked her, smoothing the tears from her cheeks, humming peace into her mind. “I understand, my dear,” he told her.  
  
“But there’s so much of it...”   
  
“I know. Hush, now. I want to show you something.”  
  
“What?”   
  
He smiled down at her. “Everything.”  
  
And he led her across the room and into the TARDIS and did exactly that. He showed her everything — and not all at once, in an overwhelming schism of birth and entropy. But the way the universe really was — one place, one time, one adventure after another. The sadness weighed by happiness, the terror tempered by wonder. One place at a time, until you’d seen enough, and moved on.   
  
Because after all he had experienced, the Doctor wasn’t about to let his granddaughter suffer though the same agonies; the cruel epithets, the teasing, the struggle to make the grade, to prove yourself to people who didn’t care. Because they didn’t understand. Susan, the Master, the Doctor, they understood. But the others?   
  
They’d looked into the schism. A window into the universe had shown them only a window into themselves. They saw what they thought they needed to see.  
  
They hadn’t seen enough.   
  
  



End file.
